'And if we do, they'd turn sodgers--yeomanry, as they call it, though there ain't a yeoman among them in these parts; and then they takes sword and kills us. So, riot or none, they has it all their own way.' Lancelot heard many more scraps of this sort. He was very much struck with their dread of violence. It did not seem cowardice. It was not loyalty--the English labourer has fallen below the capability of so spiritual a feeling; Lancelot had found out that already. It could not be apathy, for he heard nothing but complaint upon complaint bandied from mouth to mouth the whole evening. They seemed rather sunk too low in body and mind,--too stupefied and spiritless, to follow the example of the manufacturing districts; above all, they were too ill-informed. It is not mere starvation which goads the Leicester weaver to madness. It is starvation with education,--an empty stomach and a cultivated, even though miscultivated, mind. At that instant, a huge hulking farm-boy rolled into the booth, roaring, dolefully, the end of a song, with a punctuation of his own invention-- 'He'll maak me a lady. Zo . Vine to be zyure. And, vaithfully; love me. Although; I; be-e; poor-r-r-r.' Lancelot would have laughed heartily at him anywhere else; but the whole scene was past a jest; and a gleam of pathos and tenderness seemed to shine even from that doggerel,--a vista, as it were, of true genial nature, in the far distance. But as he looked round again, 'What hope,' he thought, 'of its realisation? Arcadian dreams of pastoral innocence and graceful industry, I suppose, are to be henceforth monopolised by the stage or the boudoir? Never, so help me, God!' The ursine howls of the new-comer seemed to have awakened the spirit of music in the party. 'Coom, Blackburd, gi' us zong, Blackburd, bo'!' cried a dozen voices to an impish, dark-eyed gipsy boy, of some thirteen years old. 'Put 'n on taable. Now, then, pipe up!' 'What will 'ee ha'?' 'Mary; gi' us Mary.' 'I shall make a' girls cry,' quoth Blackbird, with a grin. 'Do'n good, too; they likes it: zing away.' And the boy began, in a broad country twang, which could not overpower the sad melody of the air, or the rich sweetness of his flute-like voice,-- 'Young Mary walked sadly down through the green clover, And sighed as she looked at the babe at her breast; "My roses are faded, my false love a rover, The green graves they call me, 'Come home to your rest.'" 'Then by rode a soldier in gorgeous arraying, And "Where is your bride-ring, my fair maid?" he cried; "I ne'er had a bride-ring, by false man's betraying, Nor token of love but this babe at my side. '"Tho' gold could not buy me, sweet words could deceive me; So faithful and lonely till death I must roam." "Oh, Mary, sweet Mary, look up and forgive me, With wealth and with glory your true love comes home;